The Legislature And The Executive Are Engaged In A Politics of Development-Senator Barau Jibrin

The perceived disconnect between the National Assembly and the Executive has been described as part of a thriving democratic process.

This was the position of Senator Barau Jibrin, the Senator representing Kano North in the Red Chamber and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFUND.

He spoke with Eniola Awokoya, on the sidelines of the Vanguard Newspapers Personality awards 2017, where he was among the entourage that came to represent Kano State Governor Abdullai Umar Ganduje, who was awarded the Vanguard Governor of The Year 2017.

Read excerpts of the interview below.

Vanguard Newspapers have given awards to notable personalities tonight and your state governor was also honoured as the Governor of the year. What is your take on the pedigree of the award recipients?

Let me first congratulate the management of Vanguard Newspapers, for initiating and holding this very beautiful and laudable award night. I commend their initiative to make this happen.

Obviously, we have seen everything here and awards have been given to those who deserve it and this is very good, because whoever does something good is able to distinguish him/herself in any human endeavour, the good thing to do is to recognize that person.

Such recognition would allow those behind, to take a cue from what that person has done and the society will be better for it. So, it is something laudable that we should commend Vanguard Newspapers for doing and I want to encourage them to keep doing it every year and I am sure, it will be good for all of us.

I also want to commend Vanguard for recognizing my governor, the governor of Kano State, His Excellency Umar Ganduje. He is one of those being recognsed today and there is no doubt that he has distinguished himself as a leader who has changed Kano state and brought unprecedented development to the state. So I am really happy to be here and I urge them to keep this up.

In the buildup to the 2019 general elections, so many things are happening in the senate, especially between the legislature and the executive. As a top member of the Nigerian Senate, what is your reaction to this?

Well, that is what politics is all about. In politics, its normal for things like that to occur. In fact, you have not seen anything yet, because as the time comes nearer and as we go closer to 2019, you will see a lot more things happening.

That is politics for you and that s why it is described as the murky waters of politics, so don’t be surprised when you see things happening this way.

It is pure politics and what we always encourage is to have a healthy discourse about our nation, that will unite and not divide the country.

The ones that will instigate proper discourse that will endear development in the country, that is what we want. There is absolutely nothing wrong in having disagreements as long as they are geared towards bringing development to the country.